Years ago, three young Ohio boys fell through the ice on the Sandusky River and drowned. What a terrible, terrible tragedy. Two of the boys were brothers.
The pastor of the church where their funeral was held said the following: (link no longer active)
A minister has told mourners that three Ohio boys who fell through ice and died together in a river are now playing together in heaven.
This statement is restated many different ways during countless Christian funerals:
Granny is running around Heaven now with no pain!
Gramps is in Heaven now and doesn’t need a wheelchair to get around anymore.
Momma is in Heaven, where she has no more pain, sickness, disease, or suffering.
Here’s the problem . . .
Statements such as these are not true.
Historic, orthodox Christian doctrine teaches that when people die, they go to the grave. They are DEAD. The body remains in the grave until the resurrection. At the resurrection of the just and unjust, those who have died will receive new bodies (1 Corinthians 15).
So why is it that preachers lie about the present location of the dead? Why did I, as an Evangelical pastor, lie to numerous grieving families?
Sentimentality.
Families are grieving. They have lost a loved one. They want to believe there is a divine purpose, and they want to believe that life continues beyond the grave.
So preachers concoct grand stories about Heaven and the immediate transport of the dead from earth to the sweet-by-and-by. Never mind the fact that the Bible does not say this.
Belief in the afterlife requires faith. No one has ever come back from the dead to tell us what lies beyond the grave (if anything). Anyone who says he has is a liar.
Even Jesus himself didn’t talk about the afterlife after his resurrection from the dead. His disciples did, the apostles did, but not Jesus. He told his disciples that wherever he was, they too would be someday. He never mentioned one time any of the things commonly heard in Christian funeral sermons.
Even the notion of spending eternity in Heaven is not taught in the Bible. Search all you might, it is not there.
What IS taught in the Bible is that followers of Jesus Christ will live forever in God’s eternal kingdom (on a new earth). On this point, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are probably closer in belief to what the Bible actually teaches than many Evangelical Christians.
The same could be said about Hell. Those who are not followers of Jesus will NOT spend eternity in Hell. The Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible DOES teach, however, that unbelievers will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14).
Sentimentality allows preachers, who are supposed to be guardians of Christian doctrine to ignore what the Bible teaches in favor of telling stories to comfort grieving families.
I understand WHY they do it, but let me be clear: Preacher, if you can’t tell the truth when it really matters the most, how can you expect people to believe anything you say? If sentimentality allows you to ignore what the Bible teaches about Heaven (and Hell), how do we know that you are telling the truth any other time? Not telling the truth in hard circumstances results in a loss of credibility.
As an atheist, I have serious reservations about the notion of an afterlife. At this point in life, I lack the requisite faith necessary to believe that there’s life after death. I am of the opinion that each of us had best get to living this present life because it is the only one we have. That said, if you are a Christian, you are bound by what the Bible teaches. As a preacher, you are obligated to tell the truth. In fact, you owe it to your congregants to tell them the truth, even when it is hard to do so.
Of course, remove sentimentality from the equation and the Christian gospel and the promise of eternal life lose their luster. Telling grieving family members that Grandma — who attended church for 70 years and gave vast sums of money to the church — is lying in a grave, rotting until Jesus resurrects her a day, a hundred years, or twenty millennia from now doesn’t have as much appeal as, Grandma is in Heaven right now, in perfect health, praising Jesus day after day. She can’t wait for you to die and join her in Heaven, so the family circle will be unbroken.
Evangelicalism preaches a deferred payout. Yes, Jesus saves sinners, but the Christian life is no picnic. Life is filled with pain, heartache, and suffering. Preachers know they can’t fool their congregants about their lives. The evidence is clear: life is hard, and then you die. So, they make promises of a blissful, pain-free afterlife. The payout is immediate. Draw your last breath on earth, and draw your next breath in Heaven (or Hell). Preachers have no evidence for these promises, so they tell flowery, sentimental lies, hoping that people will buy what they are selling. Their goal is to get sinners to close the eternal life deal without ever reading the fine print. The fine print — which is found in the Bible — tells the purchaser that all promised rewards happen sometime in the distant future. Until then, your worm-eaten, rotting corpse will remain in the grave. Evangelical preachers have been making eternal life promises for centuries. These preachers come and go, live and die, and much like those to whom they promised eternal life, they lie decomposing in their graves. There they shall remain until Jesus returns to earth and resurrects them from their graves. Given the fact that Jesus promised to return in the first century, I think we can safely conclude that he, too, is lying in a grave, never to arise again from the dead.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
What would Evangelical Christianity be without guilt?
Guilt, despite what preachers say, is the engine that powers Evangelicalism.
Often preachers will try to hide guilt by giving it other names such as conviction. But no matter how they try to hide it, guilt plays a prominent part in the day-to-day lives of those who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ.
Think about it for a moment. The Bible presents God as a righteous, holy, judging, wrathful, deity. In the Old Testament, this God was unapproachable except by a few chosen people. People who got too close wound up dead.
Who can forget the story about the man who put out his hand to steady the ark of the covenant to keep it from falling and God rewarded this man by killing him? Or the story about God killing the entire human race save eight people (and yet, Evangelicals say God is pro-life). Lesson? God is a mean mother fucker you better not mess with.
From Genesis to Revelation, we see a God who gives no quarter to disobedience or sin. He demands worship and expects perfect obeisance. He is a God who not only hates sin but hates those who do it. The hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner line of thinking is not found in the Bible. Evangelicals often remind people such as myself that someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Bow now or bow later, the thinking goes, but bow you will.
No matter how much the writers of the New Testament tried to cover this up with talk of love, grace, and mercy, the God of the Bible was not one to be trifled with. Those who dallied with him ended up dead. The Bible says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
There are hundreds and hundreds of commands in the Bible — edicts that God expects Christians to obey without question or hesitation. After all, according to the Bible, God himself lives inside every Christian. Further, the Bible says Christians have the mind of Christ. The Bible also says that Christians are to be perfect even as their father in Heaven is perfect. Lest one doubt whether God is serious, the writer of First John reminds his fellow Christians that he who sins is of the devil.
The Bible’s message is clear: obey God lest you fall under his judgment, a judgment that could lead to your death. Put in words that any child can understand: do what God says or he is going to get you. Remember this is a God who killed two people in the book of Acts for lying. This is the same God who brutalized his son on the cross because of what other people did. This is also the same God that will someday ravage the earth and its inhabitants and torture in Hell for all eternity all those who are not Christians. The book of Revelation reads like a Quentin Tarantino movie script. The vengeful God will pour out his wrath upon the earth, killing billions of people and destroying the earth in the process. This destruction will be so severe that God will have to make a new Heaven and a new earth. (2 Peter 3:10-13)
It should come as no surprise, then, that many Evangelicals live with a backbreaking load of guilt. They know what God expects and they fear him, but, in spite of all their hard work, they still can’t measure up to what God demands. What deepens their guilt is preachers who say they speak for God, adding more rules and regulations — also called church standards — that God allegedly demands every Christian obey.
I spent most of my life in the Evangelical church. I desperately wanted to be a good Christian. I felt God had called me into the ministry, and I wanted to be the best pastor possible. I was willing to sacrifice everything for God. So that’s what I did. I sacrificed my family, my health, and my economic well-being for God. I held nothing back, and I was willing to die for my God if necessary.
Several years ago, someone made a comment on Facebook about my being an atheist. This person has known me for forty-two years. He said that he was shocked that I was an atheist because if anyone was a committed, true blue believer, I was. Most people who knew me in my Christian days would give a similar account of my devotion to God.
As a pastor, I gave 99% to the cause. I worked long hours without regard to whether I got paid. Most of the churches I pastored paid poverty wages, but that didn’t matter to me. I would have gladly worked for free, and, in fact, I did work many weeks and months without receiving a paycheck. It was never about the money. It was all about faithfully serving God and fulfilling his calling on my life. It was all about being obedient to the commands and teachings found in the Bible.
One would think that someone as committed as I was wouldn’t have had guilt, but guilt played a prominent part in my life. Striving for perfection quickly reveals how imperfect one is. Sometimes, I envied Christians who could take a minimal, carefree approach to God and his commands. Why couldn’t I be a nominal, slothful Christian like most of the people I pastored? I’m not sure I have an answer for that. All I know is this, I worked for the night is coming when no man can work, and the more work I put into my Christian faith the more guilt I had.
I often pondered the work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus had given his all on the cross for me, shouldn’t I give my all to him? I took seriously the command to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. I tried to pattern my life after the example of Christ and the apostles. I wanted to be found busy working for the advancement of God’s kingdom with Jesus came back to earth.
The Bible teaches that this life of ours is but a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away — like steam from a boiler radiator on a cold winter day. Rather than spending time building a kingdom in this life that will soon pass away, I sincerely believed my time was better spent laying up treasure in heaven. Why bother with the transitory, material world that will soon pass away? Better to spend every waking hour serving Jesus than to spend one moment chasing the baubles of this world. Yet, the harder I worked the more guilt I had.
I prayed in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night, and numerous times throughout the day, yet I feared I was not praying enough. After all, the Bible commands us to pray without ceasing. No matter how many people I evangelized, there were always more people who needed to hear the gospel. There never seemed to be an end of souls that needed saving. How dare I spend one moment taking care of my own personal needs while countless souls were hanging by a bare thread over the pit of Hell. I had no time for talk of Heaven or eternal reward. There was too much to do.
I know some readers of this blog will read this post and say, no wonder you were guilty all the time. Look at how motivated and driven you were. Yes, this is true, but I ask you, where do I find in the Bible the laid-back, nominal, easy-come-easy-go, Christian life found so prominently in Evangelical churches — even among pastors? While certainly, such a life would have lessened the amount of guilt I had, how could I live such a life knowing what I did about the teachings and commands of the Bible?
Look at the examples given to us in the Bible of people who were devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Show me the nominal Christian. In every instance, nominal Christianity is roundly condemned. God expects — dare I say demands — 100% devotion, and anything less than that is treason against God.
So, for many years I lived with guilt almost every day. I felt guilty when I stopped to enjoy life. I felt guilty when I gave more than passing attention to my personal wants and desires. I felt guilty when I spent money that could have gone to the church or to missionaries. Why could I not be like the Apostle Paul? Or why could I not be like Jesus himself?
Of course, the real problem was that I was a human being. A life of selfless devotion to God was/is an impossibility. Now that I’ve left the ministry and left the Christian faith, my problem with guilt still remains. I’m no longer guilty over my lack of devotion, and I’m certainly not guilty over committing what the Bible calls sin, but I do lament the amount of time, money, and effort I gave in devotion to a God who does not exist. As the old gospel song goes, wasted years, oh how foolish.
I also regret leading people into the same kind of life. I regret causing parishioners to feel guilty over not measuring up to the commands found in the Bible. As I have often said, churches would be empty if it weren’t for guilt and guilt’s twin sister, fear.
Perhaps my penance is this blog. I am sure there are many people who will read this post and know exactly what I’m talking about. Atheism and a humanist worldview have allowed me, for the most part — aside from what I have mentioned above — to live a life free of guilt (and fear). I no longer have to fear or feel guilty over not keeping God’s commands. No longer are my actions checked against God’s sin list. My works on any given day are good or bad, and when I do bad things, I need to make things right if I can and try not to do them again. There is no need for me to be threatened with Hell or promised Heaven. All I want to do is be a good person, be at peace with others, and promote human wellbeing. If my actions fail this standard, then I need to do better.
How about you? Do you still struggle with guilt post-Jesus? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
It’s 4 AM and, like every night, I am still awake.
The sounds are so clear this time of night:
The tick-tock of Big Ben on the nightstand,
Cars as they drive through the sleepy rural town we call home.
A sound machine softly plays in the background, a nightly ritual that lulls my lover to sleep.
The wind is blowing briskly as the wind chimes sing their harmonies into the fall night.
I can feel the cold draft from the wind as it pushes its way through the window frames of our 140-year-old home.
She is covered up, trying to warm herself as cold air blows over her head.
She lies beside me, just as she has these 42 years.
I look over at her and remind myself of what a great life we’ve had.
We have faced many battles that left us bruised and bloodied, but we survived. That’s what we are — survivors.
The Bible is right, there is a love that endures. She and I have that enduring love. Until death do us part, we promised each another one hot July day so many years ago.
Recent events have brought us face to face with our mortality, my mortality, her mortality.
What if it is cancer? What if there are surgical complications? What if the hourglass is close to running out? Dare we ponder our own mortality and bitter end?
Come what may, I’ve had a good life. Whether I live till Christmas or another 20 years, I am grateful for the life she and I have shared.
Forty-four years ago, a beautiful young girl dared to flirt with a brash, outspoken redheaded boy. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, we lie here in the stillness of the night, our lives shaped and filled by our shared experiences.
I think of our children and our grandchildren. I want to wake her up and say, we did well, we have more treasure than the richest man on earth.
I won’t wake her; she needs her sleep.
I hope she knows that I love her.
It’s almost 6 AM and I can feel the drugs beginning to win the battle. Sleep will soon come, and if I awake another day will be mine.
Isn’t that all any of us can hope for?
Just one more day . . .
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
As long as people have believed in God, there have been those who take the opposing view. The ranks of atheists have always been small, never amounting to more than four percent of the population. The key problem with atheism is that it lacks a strong “selling point.” The followers of this view find purpose in life by attacking the validity of the Holy Bible.
Atheists are so opposed to anything linked to God that their hatred gets in the way of common sense. One of their most grievous errors is a cultic fixation with death. I have read the views of several leading atheists and have found an almost universal embracing of death. For them, life is just meant to come to an abrupt end.
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I see this welcoming attitude toward death as a form of insanity. If we managed to defy such massive odds to be born into this world, it would be foolhardy to so willingly surrender such a precious gift. I don’t regret depriving some worm of a good meal. They don’t even have enough intelligence to say, “Boy, Todd tastes good. Yum!”
Atheists’ cheeriness about the end of life extends to the second death. Even though they don’t believe in a hell, most express a bizarre willingness to take a swan dive into the lake of fire. Pat Condell is a well-known atheist on YouTube. In one of his latest videos he said:
“So can I say to the people who have said they are praying for me, don’t do it. I’m beyond redemption. I categorically reject God. I wholeheartedly deny the Holy Spirit. I’m resigned to damnation. And I’m absolutely fine with it.”
If there is no God to grant us an afterlife, atheists should be the main frontline cheerleaders of an effort to find immortality through research. One of them should be the Jerry Lewis of natural causes: “Yes, please donate so we can find a cure for what is responsible for one-hundred percent of non-accidental deaths.”
I don’t know of any leading atheists that plan to be cryogenically frozen. According to the game plan medical science will eventually advance to the point where it can revive and restore a dead person to perfect health. These atheists could spend their first few days of new life dancing on the graves of foolish Christians who trusted in a pipe dream.
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I spoke with theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss, at a Las Vegas conference, and he said, “Atheists don’t like to use the word eternity.” Even though the forces in the universe may remain constant for all eternity, they avoid the term because God is too closely associated with it.
Atheists go as far as calling eternal life a curse. They argue that life with no end would eventually become boring and unbearable. One atheist said that if he, was allowed into heaven after a few thousand years, the empty perfection of the heavenly realm would compel him to ask God for annihilation.
I don’t see the warm embrace that many atheists associate with death. At the end of their lives they would lose everything they achieved in this world. Their loves, discoveries and experiences would all be instantly voided.
I can only conclude that the obsession with death on the part of atheists is the result of demonic delusion. Even a godless skeptical mind should know that one of the basic driving forces in nature is the desire to preserve life─at all costs.
One thing that helped me remain confident in my faith is the understanding that there are forces dedicated to attacking my beliefs. If God was a lie and there was no life after death, why would people have such a volatile allergic reaction to a message that seems so reasonable? When I see people who blindly embrace death, I see the fingerprints of the one who brought death into this world.
“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I learned of his death in a text from his sister. Seeming to anticipate my question, she said it had nothing to do with COVID-19. Rather, he had fallen asleep for the last time.
By today’s standards, he was young to have died that way. Still, it somehow wasn’t a surprise: Given his condition, it’s almost surprising that he made it into his mid-50s. He never learned how to speak or feed himself; he never acquired the basic day-to-day skills most of us have — whether through instruction or osmosis — by the time we’re about three or four years old. Lacking in motor control, he could not walk without supervision, and even with help, those walks were brief. Other kinds of exercise were out of the question, so he — who was naturally big — became obese, which may have led to other conditions he developed.
For most of his life, he was institutionalized. In fact, he was a patient at one of the most notorious mental hospitals — Willowbrook State School, in Staten Island, New York — when a local Eyewitness News reporter exposed conditions that would have made Hard Times seem like Pollyanna. (I once told someone, only half-jokingly, that my cousin helped to make Geraldo Rivera famous.) At the time of his death, my cousin — whom I’ll call Randall — had been living in a group home for more than half of his life.
Although he didn’t succumb to COVID-19, his demise seems — at least to me — connected to a colleague, a student and a friendly acquaintance of mine who died that way. And their deaths all made me angry for the same reason.
My aunt was a devout Roman Catholic who later became an Evangelical Christian. When Randall was a toddler and his sister — whom I’ll name Lorinda — was entering school, they had serious problems. Randall, as I mentioned, wasn’t developing in normal ways. Lorinda, on the other hand, was very intelligent and articulate, but had difficulties that, as it turned out, were related to her vision. Then, as now, my aunt believed that faith and prayer could heal. That also meant that her children’s maladies were a signal from God that she had been, in some way, sinful. In the milieu in which I grew up — pre-Vatican II Catholic in a post-Vatican II world — such beliefs were still common.
Lorinda nearly went blind. Only intervention from a social worker got her the treatment she needed. That same social worker helped to secure a place for Randall at Willowbrook, apparently unaware of its dire conditions. To be fair, at that time, half a century ago, there was little, if any, effective treatment available anywhere in the US for profoundly retarded people.
My anger over what Lorinda and Randall endured at such a tender age re-surfaced with the deaths of my colleague, student and friend because, at bottom, one cause of their deaths was misguided and manipulated religious faith. One reason why leaders at every level of government in the United States have responded to the threat of COVID-19 in ways that were ineffectual, duplicitous, or simply callous is pressure from fundamentalist religious organizations, whether Evangelical Christian in “red” states or Ultra-Orthodox Jews (whose political and social stances are all but identical to those of Evangelical Christians) in large “blue” cities. Some of those leaders are fundamentalists; others, like the President, have allied themselves with the Christian equivalents of Wahhabis because they know their election (or re-election) prospects depend on doing so. That is why mayors, governors, and the President have been willing to throw science to the wind and allow religious gatherings — as if such congregations are any less likely to spread the virus than, say, a concert, art opening, or sporting event.
I am angry today because cynical, rapacious political and religious leaders are still playing on people’s insecurities, and stoking their fears, to inculcate them with disproved notions about who or what is causing illness and pandemics—and how to deal with those things. The blood of my cousin, colleague, student and friend is on their hands.
What’s with Evangelical apologists and their insistence that atheists, agnostics, and other unbelievers, are more fearful than Christians? Last week, I wrote about Clay Jones’ assertion that everyone fears death except Christians. I conclusively showed that fearing death is common to the human race, and Christians are in no way exempt from fear.
Last week, faux-historian David Barton was on “Stand in the Gap,” a radio program produced by the American Pastors Network. Barton shared his “expertise” on past epidemics. Speaking of the 1633 smallpox epidemic, Barton stated that Christians during that time didn’t panic because of their belief in God:
But the difference was they were much more grounded with God. As you look across Massachusetts, as you look across the New England areas, so many of those guys had come here on the Bible, on religious liberty. And for them death was, that was a step into eternal life. Today, this is the most secular America has ever been. And so, we’re watching governors and mayors respond out of fear and panic, and shutting down stuff that’s never been shut down before because they’re just scared to death somebody’s going to die. And so, the confidence of courage is really what we don’t see right now nationally.
“Stand in the Gap” host Sam Rohrer added:
But a point you made there, I think is worth touching on. And that is the worldview of people at that time caused them not to panic or to fear because of the fear of death. Because they knew, as we know as believers, that if we are to pass away, we’re only going to step from here into eternity with the Lord. And that’s what we want to do. But for those who do not know the Lord, or have rejected a biblical worldview understanding of God and redemption, they frankly have a reason to fear at these days.
…
Wow. They had reason to fear back there, but they did not because of belief in God.
Barton later added:
So, what we see right now is a fear of death. And we’re seeing people go to excessive extremes because they are scared to death of dying, because this is all they know, is what’s here. They don’t know of an afterlife, they don’t even understand that there will be an afterlife, whether it’s Heaven, Hell, or whatever they choose. It’s their choice through Christ. So that’s one thing that stands out to me is, is the whole culture was built around understanding that you are going to go into eternity. Are you ready to go into eternity? And so, the response is quite different public policy wise. If you’re surrounded with leaders who understand a biblical worldview, what you do is call for days of prayer and fasting, if we can get a hold of God on this and get God to intervene then we can see an end to this.
What evidence do Barton and Rohrer provide for their assertions? None. I see no evidence for the claim that atheists, agnostics, and other non-Christians fear death any more than Christian do. Right-minded people in this time when COVID-19 is infecting and killing people left and right should be fearful that they are next. Feel a cold coming on? Have a fever? Fell achy all over? Have a cough? Is it allergies? Or have you been infected with a deadly virus that has infected more over 1,000,000 Americans, with a death toll that will soon surpass the total deaths in the Vietnam War? Reasonable people would, at the very least, be concerned that they might become infected. And for those of us, Christian or not, with comorbidities, we have every reason to fear that this virus is stalking us, and if it catches us it could kill us.
Barton, Roherer, and Jones would have us believe that certain theological beliefs inoculate Christians from normal human feelings. The promise of life after death and a home in Heaven, according to these apologists, are sufficient to ward off fear. Sure, I can see how such a promise might cause some Christians to deny reality. These very same delusions fuel lifetimes of weekly church attendance. These very same delusions are a catalyst for lifetimes of self-denial. This or that behavior is “sin.” Can’t do that lest I risk losing my home in Heaven. Or so Christians think, anyway.
What do we know about religious people in general? Despite their commitment to God, religious texts, theological constructs, worship, and conforming to exacting standards of conduct, believers are no different from the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. And when it comes time to die, religious people fear the unknown just like the rest of us do. Oh, they may hide their fear because that’s what everyone expects them to do, but psychologically they fear the end of the only life they have ever known.
Barton states non-Christians, “are scared to death of dying, because this is all they know, is what’s here.” Are atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers scared to death of dying? I am sure some are. Others resolutely embrace their end. Yes, knowing that the only life we will ever have is coming to an end brings all sorts of feelings. However, are we really “scared” to any greater degree than those who worship the Christian God or some other deity? I think not.
I will soon be sixty-three years old. I have been battling chronic health problems for twenty-four years. I have had several brushes with death, one of which a doctor told thirty-four year old Bruce and his wife, “if your immune system doesn’t kick in, there’s nothing we can do for you.” I had been battling mononucleosis for several months. My primary care doctor missed that I had mono, thinking that I was battling something else. Following course after course of antibiotics with no cure, the doctor ordered a mono test. It came back positive. Several days later, my temperature spiked to 104 degrees, landing me in the hospital. My liver and spleen were swollen, and my immune system was so trashed that my tonsils and adenoids were pure white. Fortunately, my immune system did win the battle. However, as I lay in my hospital bed, my mind pondered dying so young and whether there really was life after death. This was, for me, the first time, I felt my mortality. As a committed Evangelical Christian, I believed that Heaven awaited me on the other side of chilly Jordan. However, I did fear what I did not know. Isn’t that a normal human response to the unknown; to the prospect of impending death? Was I less than Christian for fearing death? I think not.
Zealots such as Barton, Roherer, and Jones need people to believe what they are peddling. Their incomes and lifestyles depend on convincing people that there’s an afterlife, and, as Jesus promised, eternity in Heaven awaits all those who worship the right God. They dare not admit their own fears or doubts lest they are forced to get real jobs. Imagine what would happen to Christian sects and churches if their teachers and leaders admitted their doubts as to life after death. Why, churches would empty out overnight. Without the carrot, there is no reason to endure the stick.
As with most people, I am in no hurry to die. Some days, I am weary from daily battling chronic pain. I have thoughts of eternal darkness without pain; of the peace, comfort, and deliverance the grave brings. But then I think of Polly, our children, and our grandchildren. And in that moment, I am reminded that I have much to live for; that the only life I will ever have is this one. And so I arise and face the day. Death will certainly come for me, sooner than later. But until then, I plan on enjoying life and doing what I can to make this world a better place for others.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Recently, Evangelical writer Erik Manning interviewed Clay Jones, author of the book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It. Jones, also an Evangelical, holds a doctor of ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is an associate professor in the Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics at Talbot School of Theology — the seminary wing of Biola University.
Jones had some interesting (and ignorant) things to say to about how unbelievers, particularly atheists, deal with death.
People are horrified by the prospect of their deaths but most of the time they won’t admit it to themselves! But when a woman finds a lump in her breast, or a man has a chest pain, or a person gets a positive back on a blood test, then the fear of death stands in front of them and won’t leave the room. What’s scaring people with COVID-19 is that suddenly the possibility of their death becomes very real and it reveals how much they really do fear death. Christians shouldn’t be surprised that non-Christians fear death because Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us Jesus died for us so “that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Let me emphasize this: the Bible tells us that “all their lives,” people are “held in slavery by their fear of death.”
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Because people are terrified by the fact of their deaths (even though for the most part they try to deny it and distract themselves from it), down deep they know they will die and they find ways to transcend the fact that they know they are going to die. Much of human behavior is driven by an attempt to evade death.
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In the book I go through the atheist attempts to feel good, or at least okay about death: “immortality would be boring” (that’s a big one), “live in the moment,” your individual existence is unreal (hard to believe but this was Einstein’s answer), and so on and on. They all fail and that’s why atheists have a higher suicide rate than those who believe there is a God. Here’s the last sentence of the last page of Duke University philosopher Alex Rosenberg’s book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions: “Take a Prozac or your favorite serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and keep taking them till they kick in.” So atheist Rosenberg’s presumably sober advice for dealing with death fears is “Get high!”
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People are living in denial and distraction (you can’t just deny something, you have to distract yourself from it) and that’s why we pay movie, singing, and sports stars more than we pay almost anyone in society—they do what we need most—they keep our minds occupied so we don’t have to think about our deaths. No one should be surprised that people are depressed, neurotic, and even psychotic because of the fear of death scares them. Of course, people are hooked on drugs, as I just said, Rosenberg’s advice to deal with death is to take drugs. Suicide is a symptom of the fear of death because it allows you to control that which controls you.
Jones’ view can be summed up thusly: non-Christians and atheists fear death, deny its existence, and do everything in their power to avoid it. Christians, on the other hand (see interview for what Jones says about Christians and death), accept the reality of death, are prepared to die, and live accordingly. While Jones admits some Christians fear death, he asserts that they do so because they have a “paltry, usually false view of heaven.” Jones adds, that another reason Christians fear death is that “it is so easy for Christian to be in love for this present world.”
Jones’s advice for Christians who fear death is that believers should “focus on eternal life” and remember that Christians “are never going to experience death.” Jones reminds believers:
In Jesus, we will live forever! That’s the Christian’s hope and the evidence for that is that Jesus was raised from the dead. So be encouraged, Christian, you are going to live forever!
I was part of the Christian church for fifty years. I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five of those years. I pastored Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), Southern Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, and nondenominational congregations. I visited numerous dying congregants in the hospital and in their homes. I also did the same for unbelievers, hoping to evangelize them before they died. I have witnessed death up close, standing by bedsides as Christians and unbelievers alike drew their last breaths. These experiences had a powerful effect on me. Having lost my parents at ages forty-nine and fifty-four, I know the pain that one feels when loved ones die. Fifteen years ago, my wife’s sister was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. We still, to this day, mourn the loss of Kathy. (Please see If One Soul Gets Saved, It’s Worth it All.)
What helped me, at the time, to minister to those who were dying and allowed me to personally endure the death of family members was the fact that I was a Christian; that I believed after death believers were “absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).
When it comes to questions of life and death and whether there is human existence beyond the grave, religion is a panacea. People want to believe their lives have meaning and purpose, and that after death there awaits for them heavenly bliss and reunion with family and friends who, along with Toto, have gone to the great OZ in the sky.
Jones, as Evangelical apologists are wont to do, presupposes that his God, his belief system, and what the Bible says about life, death, and the afterlife are true. For those of us who reject his presuppositions, Jones says we are living in denial. In fact, it is Jones and other Evangelicals like him who are living in denial. The facts on the ground tell us that we live once, die, end of story. Jones provides no evidence for the existence of the afterlife except for what the Bible says about the death and resurrection of Jesus. THE BIBLE SAYS is all Jones has to offer on the subject. If and when Jones coughs up some actual evidence for his claims, I know more than a few atheists who will be glad to listen. Appealing to the Bible is not evidence. And until such evidence is provided, all Jones really has is faith: faith that the triune Christian God is the one true God, faith that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, faith that everything the Bible says about life, death, and eternal life is true. I, for one, am not willing to set reason and skepticism aside and just faith-it.
That said, I recognize the power of the Christian myth. A religion need not be true for it to have value. Jones’ religion is a myth just like all the other religions he has deemed false. The battle between the various religions of the world is all about whose myth is true. Each warring party is certain that their mythology is true. Most people believe that their respective religion is the one true faith. In the United States, Christianity is the dominant myth. Evangelicals such as Jones say that all humans are vile, depraved sinners who deserve judgment and Hell. What an awful view of humanity. Of course, Evangelicals offer a remedy for human depravity: the death and resurrection of Jesus, the son of God. All sinners need to do is repent of their sin and put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Well, that and commit oneself to extravagantly worshiping the Christian God, attending (the right) church, reading the Bible, praying, tithing, and living according to the moral code taught in the Bible (as interpreted by Evangelical pastors). True Christians® will do all of these things, and if they do, they will be rewarded with eternal life in the sweet-by-and-by after death.
Millions and millions of Americans believe these things to be true. They are literally betting their lives on the hope and promise of a divine payoff after death. Atheism, of course, can’t compete with the power of the Christian mMillions and millions of Americans believe these things to be true. They are literally betting their lives on the hope and promise of a divine payoff after death. Atheism, of course, can’t compete with the power of the Christian myth. People want or need to believe that their lives have more meaning than the present. Atheists, on the other hand, can only say we have, to misquote a worn-out Evangelical cliché, one life, twill soon be past, and after that we are dead. I know, I know, cold and indifferent, but that’s the nature of reality.
Do all atheists, as Jones ignorantly asserts, fear death? I can’t speak for all atheists, but I can say, personally, that most of the time I don’t fear death. Polly and I were talking about this very thing today. Neither of us is in great health. I have pervasive health problems, and if I become infected with COVID-19, there’s a good chance that I will die. There’s also a good chance that I will die from a heart attack, complications of diabetes, or cancer. And there’s even a better chance that I will trip over a toy left on the floor by one of my grandchildren, fall, and die from a brain contusion or broken neck. The things that could kill me sometime beyond my next breath are legion. Shall I sit around and stew in my mortality? Of course not. All I can do is take care of myself the best I can. Some day, sooner and not later, that won’t be enough, and I will be dead. That’s just how it is. Why should I fear that which I cannot control?
I would argue that it is actually Evangelicals, who deep down in their little old heart of hearts, fear death. Why? Because they will live their whole lives hoping they have believed the right things and done the right things necessary to secure their rooms in God’s Trump Hotel in the Sky. (Please see Evangelicals Talk a Good Line When it Comes to Death, but Change Their Tune When They Are Dying.)
How can they know for sure? Doesn’t the Bible say that many “believers” will be deceived and end up in Hell; that Jesus will say them on judgment day, I never knew you (Matthew 7:22-23)? Isn’t that what critics say of me; that I was a fraud, a false prophet, a deceiver; that I never was a True Christian®; that I never was saved, born-again, bought by the blood, or regenerated? Most Evangelicals are either Calvinists or Arminians. The former believe that a Christian must endure (persevere) unto the end to be saved. No Calvinists can know for sure they are among the elect. And Arminians are not much different, belief-wise. Christians can fall from grace, Arminians say, and entrance into God’s eternal kingdom depends on personal holiness (without which no man shall see the Lord Hebrew 12:14, Romans 6:22, Ephesians 4:24). It should not be surprising, then, that many Evangelicals fear death, wondering if they have done all that is necessary to enter Heaven after death (which technically they don’t do until the general resurrection, but I will leave that subject until another day).
It is not unnatural for any of us — Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, pagans, atheists, agnostics — to fear what we have never experienced. Can I say with certainty that I will have no fear when it comes my time to die? Of course not. I hope that I will enter the darkness of night in the strength of my convictions; that I have run the race set before me (Hebrews 12:1) and now I am ready to die. Until that time comes, all I know to do is keep pressing forward towards the high mark and calling of reason and humanism (Philippians 3:14), living life to its fullest. Whether I die tonight, tomorrow, or ten years from now, it matters not. Each day is a new opportunity for me to love my family and do what I can to make a difference in the lives of others.
Let me conclude this post with answer I give to the question: If you had one piece of advice to give me, what would it be?
You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Some day, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.
And all the atheists said, Amen!
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.
Texas Born & Bred asked:
I am in my sixties. In the last 2 or 3 years, I have attended the funerals of several close relatives and friends that were younger than me. One cousin that died was very close. We were each other’s best man at our weddings. My very best friend in high school died. Several friends my age or younger are struggling with serious health problems.
So death often captures my attention. I am a Christian (what kind? – barely Christian) and I am constantly reminded in church, Sunday school, and bible studies of the glory that await us once we die. That would be nice and does provide comfort. But my problem is that the ones I cared deeply about that have died were not the church-going type. And that is discomforting. Life is not fair.
I took a stroll through an older cemetery one day and could not help but notice the large number of headstones of babies. Back in the 1800s, it was common for children to die in sickness outbreaks. One headstone was simply marked “Wilson babies”. What a horrible thing to go through! But the parents struggled on. They still had crops to work and cows to milk. Their faith must have provided a bit of comfort in such a gut-wrenching time.
How do atheists handle the death of loved ones? Is their grieving process the same as believers who expect to see their loved ones again someday in heaven?
This is a great question. For Christians, when death takes a loved one, they have the promise of comfort from Jesus and the hope of being reunited in Heaven someday. Let’s face it, atheism can’t offer life after death, nor is it all that comforting to think that you’ll never see your loved one again. Yet, knowing there is no life after death can and does motivate atheists to live life to its fullest. If I had one piece of advice to give it would be this:
You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Someday, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.
Death is quite personal, and how we respond is too. Unlike the Christian who is expected to put his faith in Jesus and claim the promises of God, the atheist must meet death head-on without any buffers or feel-good beliefs. When death takes a loved one, that’s the end. What’s left are the memories made over a lifetime. While I can’t speak for any atheist but myself, if Polly died before me, I hope I would, in the midst of my grief, revel in our shared experiences. We’ve been married for almost forty-two years. We’ve raised six wonderful children, and are blessed beyond measure with thirteen grandchildren. We have had all sorts of experiences, both personally and together. We’ve each stood by the hospital bedside of the other, fearing that we would never see each other again. Our marriage has been tested and tried, yet we have endured. That said, if either of us died today, our testimony would be, it’s been good. While I can’t imagine living one day without Polly, I know life will go one whether I can imagine it or not.
How would you answer Texas Born and Bred’s question? What sage, witty advice would you give to atheists facing the death of a loved one? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.
As soon as Christian Fundamentalists read this headline they will shout at their screen:
You will be burning in Hell!
You will know there is a God!
You will know I was right!
They will see my death as vindication of their belief system. I wonder how many of them will say to themselves, I bet Bruce wishes he had listened to me! I can hear a Calvinist saying, now we know Bruce was not one of the elect! They will speak of the preacher-turned-atheist who now knows the TRUTH. (Please see Christopher Hitchens is in Hell.)
If they bother to read beyond the title of this post, they will see that this post is not about my e-t-e-r-n-a-l destiny. I have no concerns over God, judgment, or Hell. I am confident that Hell is the creation of religious leaders who want to control people through fear. Fear God! Fear Judgment! Fear Hell! Since Christianity and the Bible no longer have any power over me, I no longer fear God or Hell. I am reasonably certain that this is the only life I will ever have, and once I die, I will be . . . drum roll please, d-e-a-d.
The recent Coronavirus pandemic and the lethal nature of COVID-19 — especially for senior adults with health problems — certainly has refocused my attention on death. Not only my own death, but that of my wife, children, grandchildren, in-laws, and siblings. I can’t help but think about my editor, Carolyn. She’s older than I, and I wonder what I will do if Loki calls her home? 🙂 Who will clean up my writing? And I could say the same thing about other friends of mine. I genuinely want them to live long lives. At the very least, I want them to outlive me. 🙂 I hate funerals.
Here’s what I want to happen after I draw my last breath.
First, I do not want a funeral service. Waste of time, effort, and money. No need for fake friends or distant family members to show up and weep fake tears. No need for flowers. I want Polly to spend as little as possible on disposing of my dead carcass. Trust me, I won’t care.
Second, I want to be cremated. No special urn. A cardboard box will work just fine. If Polly wants to show her love for me, a Hostess cupcake box would be sweet. As I jokingly told my children, when I am cremated I will go from ass to ashes. None of them disagreed with this assessment.
Third, I want my ashes to be spread along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Polly knows the place. I hope my children, daughters-in-law, son-in-law, grandchildren, and close family will be there. Maybe my newly discovered step-brother will be there. I want no prayers said, and as few tears as possible. Perhaps those who are gathered will share a funny story, one of their many Butch/Bruce/Dad/Grandpa stories. I hope they will remember me for the good I have done and forgive me for those moments when I was less than I could or should have been.
And that’s it.
Life is not about dying, it’s about living. Since I am on the short side of life, I dare not waste the time I have left. When death comes, the battery in my life clock will be depleted. Much like the Big Ben clock beside our bed — the one I listen to late at night as it clicks off the seconds — I know there is coming a day when I will hear CLICK and that will be it.
How about you? As an atheist or non-Christian, what do you want to happen after you die? Have you made funeral plans? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Like clockwork, my wife calls her mother every Sunday evening at 10:00 PM. They typically talk for an hour. Last Sunday, Polly asked her mom whether she was wearing a face mask when she went out in public. Mom replied, “no, I don’t need to wear a mask.” When Polly, out of concern for her eighty-four-year-old mother’s health and that of her father, told her mom, “look, you need to get a mask and wear it whenever you go out of the house.” Mom replied, “when it’s my time to die, I’m ready to go.” Polly angrily retorted, “and no one will be able to come to your funeral.” Mom smugly replied, “oh well, I won’t care. I’ll be dead.” And that was that . . .
It would be easy to dismiss Mom’s careless, reckless, stupid behavior as that of an old woman in poor health. However, there’s a deeper issue that I believe is driving her dismissal of common sense: Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) theology and practice. Mom is the wife of a retired IFB pastor. She and Dad have attended the Newark Baptist Temple in Heath, Ohio, on and off, since May 1976. You might remember me writing about their church several weeks ago. (Please see IFB Pastor Mark Falls Tries to Use Bible Verses to Guilt People into Attending Church during Coronavirus Pandemic and Understanding the Pastors Who Refuse to Close Their Churches During the Coronavirus Pandemic.) As of today, the Newark Baptist Temple is still holding in-person worship services on Sunday mornings! One person intimately connected to the Baptist Temple told me, “Mark Falls is an idiot.” To that I say, amen. Pastor Falls continues to put theology and politics before the health and welfare of his congregation and that of the local community. Here’s a Facebook video of the Easter service at the Baptist Temple:
Here’s a Facebook video of their most recent Sunday service.
As you can see, the pastor and his congregation seem unconcerned about COVID-19. No social distancing to speak of, no masks, or gloves. The good news is that Mom and Dad haven’t been back to church since I publicly called attention to their pastor’s abhorrent behavior. It’s also evident, based on building acoustics, that attendance is a fraction of what it typically is. (I find it interesting the cameraman never pans the crowd.) Fortunately, some church members have more common sense than their pastor and other church leaders.
Setting Falls’ anti-government ideology and IFB theology aside, why does he insist on putting his parishioners at risk?
As Pastor Falls was preparing to pray at the start of last Sunday’s service, he stated:
Amen. What a privilege to be at the Newark Baptist Temple this morning. We’re so glad to see each of you here, and we are thrilled to know that many are watching us at home as well. Isn’t it great to be able to sing I’m Saved, I’m Delivered? The greatest crisis in your entire life was your sin crisis. Because you are going to have to stand before God someday. And if the Lord can save us from that he can save us from anything.
And there is it is: “if the Lord can save us from that [sin], the Lord can save us from anything.” No need to concern yourself with the Coronavirus. The Lord, if he so wills, can and will deliver you from the virus. Jesus can do what doctors and scientists can’t do. He’s the great physician! No worries. . . . Hardened into this thinking is nascent fatalism. Oh, Falls and other Fundamentalists will deny that they are preaching fatalism, but it’s clear from their sermons, prayers, and actions, fatalism is exactly what they are preaching. In this instance, they are no different from Islamic imams who say, “Allah’s will be done.”
Now let me bring this post back around to what Polly’s mom said about not wearing a mask: “No, I don’t need to wear a mask. When it’s my time to die, I’m ready to go.” Her comment drips with the fatalism taught to her by the pastors of the Baptist Temple, both the late Jim Dennis and now Mark Falls.
Where does this fatalism come from? As with most beliefs within the IFB church movement, their fatalism rests on their peculiar interpretation of the Protestant Bible. An overarching teaching that infuses fatalism into everything IFB churches say and do is the belief that the Christian God is the sovereign Lord of all creation; that he holds the world in the palm of his hand; that nothing happens apart from God’s purpose, plan, and will. Thus, no need to worry. Jesus is on the job! Amen? Amen!
What is it that causes Polly’s mom to be so fatalistic about dying; so much so that she is willing to put not only her own health at risk, but that of her husband? I suspect that her fatalism can be traced back to Hebrews 9:27:
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment
Here’s how this verse is typically interpreted in IFB circles. God is the giver and taker of life. When we are born, we come into the world with an expiration date; a death date. This date is fixed by God, and known only to him. No one dies before their appointed time. God knows the exact moment each of us is going to die. Not only that, he knows exactly how we are going to die. Thus, in Mom’s eyes, Jesus is on the job, and COVID-19 ain’t going to kill her unless God says so. And if God says so, there’s nothing she or anyone else can do about it.
Because of Mom’s intransigent fatalism, it is unlikely that we will ever see Polly’s parents again face to face. We are not willing to risk infection, all because of her stubborn unwillingness to take basic health and safety precautions. We expect to one day hear the phone ring, and at the other end someone will be telling us one or both of them are dead. Will it be COVID-19 that kills them? I don’t know. Both of them have serious health problems. A virus such as COVID-19 would make easy work of them. We wish they would at least take basic safety precautions, but they won’t. I suspect that a month from now they will join their church family after church down at the local Olive Garden for lunch. “See, we all survived! Glory and praise to Jesus!” And three or four weeks later? Some of them may learn that their God is not in control; that their God is no match for COVID-19, influenza, or any of the other countless bacteria and viruses trying to kill us. Biology and science trump religion every time. Too bad the people who most need to hear this will be dead.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
